In order for a user to configure some digital life devices (cell phones, digital cameras, portable gaming device, satellite radios, GPS devices, etc.), they are required to enter some amount of information into the device such as geographic location, personal user registration, or wireless network information. This can be accomplished by the use of an emulated keyboard or some other method of character selection, or in the case of many wireless devices, by way of automatic detection and communication (Wi-Fi and Bluetooth).
Many users do not know how to configure their own devices. Often times, if the device works well enough with the default settings, a user will leave these default settings unchanged because they do not want to go through the pains of a complicated configuration procedure. It is thus much more likely that a hacker will find it easy to obtain a list of default passwords for common digital devices on the Internet, which they can then use to wrongfully obtain access to such an unprotected device.
The CueCat (a device once offered by Radio Shack) was a barcode scanning device disposed between a user's keyboard and their PC to convert barcodes into character strings that were recognized by provided software to direct the user to an advertiser's web site. This device is not likely to advance past its current stages, where it requires the user to place the cursor into the appropriate text entry field and then let the CueCat “type” out the password. It is meant as a method of automating the password entry and tracking process for the PC (Personal Computer) user, and does not extend to peripherals, nor does it involve any sort of automatic configuration.
ShotCode is a company that takes a company's website and turns it into a special kind of readable mark, almost like the ones that one sees on UPS labels. The idea is that a user will see an ad at a bus stop or elsewhere and focus their camera on this readable barcode-type mark, and their handheld device will take them to the advertiser's website. This is the only function that their method provides, namely, the encoding of a URL that the user is then led to. Shotcode's system, while being more intelligent than CueCat, is just another method of bypassing the process of typing out a long URL for a website, used primarily for advertising. There is no processing of the data that is being decoded beyond simply extracting the characters that form the URL, whereas the present invention includes a set of instructions that are processed and executed by the digital device. Additionally, the Shotcode system does not extend as far as the system proposed herein, which is specifically designed to provide automated device configuration.
From the above, it is therefore seen that there exists a need in the art to overcome the deficiencies and limitations described herein and above.